HAWK AND HENS. 265 



soft note. Of all the occurrences of their life, 

 that of laying seems to be the most important ; for 

 no sooner has a hen disburdened herself, than she 

 rushes forth with a clamorous kind of joy, which 

 the cock and the rest of his mistresses immediately 

 adopt. The tumult is not confined to the family 

 concerned, but catches from yard to yard, and 

 spreads to every homestead within hearing, till at 

 last the whole village is in an uproar. As soon as 

 a hen becomes a mother, her new relation demands 

 a new language : she then runs clucking and 

 screaming about, and seems agitated as if pos- 

 sessed. The father of the flock has also a consi- 

 derable vocabulary ; if he finds food, he calls a 

 favourite concubine to partake ; and if a bird of 

 prey passes over, with a warning voice, he bids his 

 family beware. The gallant chanticleer has, at com- 

 mand, his amorous phrases and his terms of defi- 

 ance. But the sound by which he is best known 

 is his crowing : by this he has been distinguished 

 in all ages as the countryman's clock or larum, as 

 the watchman that proclaims the divisions of the 

 night. Thus the poet elegantly styles him 



" The crested cock, whose clarion sounds 

 The silent hours." 



A neighbouring gentleman one summer had lost 

 most of his chickens by a sparrow-hawk, that came 

 gliding down between a fagot pile and the end of 

 his house to the place where the coops stood. 

 The owner, inwardly vexed to see his flock thus 

 diminishing, hung a setting net adroitly between 

 the pile and the house, into which the caitiff 

 dashed and was entangled. Resentment suggested 

 the law of retaliation ; he therefore clipped the 

 hawk's wings, cut off his talons, and fixing a cork 

 on his bill, threw him down among the brood-hens. 



